Nicholas Hytner’s ambitious plans for London’s National Theatre, anounced last week, are a big hit. “Doing stripped-down productions, ‘with big, bold, simple strokes’ and a minimum of costumes and scenery, is a way not just of bringing down prices and attracting new audiences, but ensuring that great plays are freshly considered in one of the world’s most exciting theatrical spaces. Nor is he merely after the elusive ‘yoof’ to which our arts commisars are so enslaved.”
Blog
New London Car Tax May Impact Theatres?
After February 17th, cars entering downtown London on weekdays will have to pay a £5 “congestion” charge designed to help alleviate serious car gridlock in the capital. But this is likely to have an impact on theatre goers in the West End. Will the charge discourage lower-income theatre-goers from coming in for a show?
Big Cuts In Scottish Arts
The Scottish government’s new budget hacks away at arts budgets. The Scottish Opera, “which has had a number of financial crises in recent years, said it was ‘dismayed’ last night to receive, in real terms, a budget cut and it is expected that it will have to cut the number of operas it has planned. All three of the other national arts companies, and the National Theatre plan, also emerged as cultural casualties in the new budget announced yesterday.”
Scaling Down To Keep Children’s Theatre On Track
Minneapolis’ Children’s Theatre Company announced it was expanding last year. But financial help approved by the state legislature was vetoed by Governor Jesse Ventura. And the theatre has only raised $11.5 million of the $24 million needed. On top of it all, costs for the project as designed last year went up. So the company has scaled back the building by 25 percent to keep it on track.
Standing Complaint
Standing ovations have become the automatic response for all too many performances. Doesn’t matter whether they’ve earned it or not. “This un-thought-through enthusiasm has become – pardon the expression – a knee jerk response. Call it ovation inflation, it is yet one more example of our society’s tendency to supersize every experience, emotion and commodity.”
Sundance – What’s It All About?
Does the Sundance Festival mean anything at the box office? “It’s like lemmings off a cliff. Year after year, we love tracking which films everyone is circling, but are any of these films really going to succeed? I hope so. But that’s the exception, not the rule. Of the 16 films acquired and released out of last year’s exceptionally busy Sundance bazaar, only five broke $1 million at the box office.”
San Francisco Opera Slashes Operations
Beginning in 2005, the company will cut its season from 88 performances of 11 or 12 productions to about 65 performances a year spread over nine productions. “The goal is to shrink the annual operating budget from around $60 million to $45 million. The Opera had a deficit of $7.6 million for the 2001-02 season and is predicting a $9.2 million shortfall this year. “This city is just not able financially to support a jumbo jet.”
Collins: Why Poetry Isn’t More Popular
Why don’t more people read poetry? American Poet Laureate Billy Collins says he knows: “There’s a waiting audience out there that was frightened away by Modernist poetry in school. You feel alienated from your own language, which is unpleasant. There’s a syllogism at work here. The syllogism goes like this: I can read and understand English; this poem was written in English; I can’t understand this poem.”
Salons – We’re Having A Party
“Since the mid-nineties, various Toronto artists have attempted, in fits and starts, to revive the salon tradition by repositioning it as a multi-media drop-in, not a formal symposium. Artists in the city quickly realized that showing works in private homes can be a lot less trouble than begging (and paying) dealers for space or negotiating the byzantine, committee-driven world of publicly funded galleries.”
Hard Times For Pittsburgh Symphony
The Pittsburgh Symphony has a long and distinguished history. But the orcxhestra is in big financial trouble. “The leaders of the proud Pittsburgh Symphony are trying to portray its current situation as an opportunity, not a crisis. ‘It’s very clear that the symphony is at a defining moment in its history. It is time for new energy and new ideas. We have an opportunity for great change.”